One of the goals of designers of high performance gas turbine aircraft engines has been to achieve thrust vectoring exhaust nozzles. While this goal has been somewhat achieved through the use of "two-dimensional" nozzles, such nozzles are substantially heavier and more expensive than the variable exit area axisymmetric nozzles that they are intended to replace. Heretofore designers have been unable to produce thrust vectoring from an axisymmetric exhaust nozzle without significantly increasing the cost and weight of the axisymmetric nozzle, as well as the complexity thereof.
What is needed is a mechanism to provide selective positioning of the divergent flaps of an axisymmetric exhaust nozzle to produce thrust vectoring without significantly increasing the weight and complexity thereof.